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Bore Machines

Someone in Hollywood needs to call a doctor for Michael Bay. His condition is deteriorating and it's affecting his work. The notoriously A.D.D. director's "Transformers" sequel, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen", is such a pointless, messy assault on the senses that it's hard to even call it a movie. There is little intelligible plot, no characters to root for and hardly even a sense of place. What's left is basically a two-plus hour special effects reel. Even for a Michael Bay movie, it's just truly awful.

Let's get the would-be plot out of the way first (the filmmakers sure did). From what I could discern, for the last two years the benevolent Autobots have partnered with a human army (led by the U.S., of course, but peppered with British accents) to hunt down the planet's remaining Decepticons. In an opening sequence of staggering mayhem (which we are expected to believe gets "covered up"), a dying bad-bot warns "The Fallen is coming". Verb agreement aside, The Fallen, it turns out, is a particularly nasty Decepticon who's been hiding out somewhere in space. He makes Megatron look like a robo-pussycat. He's after a device called "The Matrix of Leadership", which will destroy the Earth's sun and produce energy for all his mechanized minions (so much for solar power).

I think I've got that all straight, but it doesn't really matter. Judging by the human race depicted in the film, the planet's not worth saving anyway.

We find our returning hero, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf, long past outgrowing these movies), on his way to college with his over-protective (and over-played) parents in tow. Sam is matriculating to M.B.U. (Michael Bay University), a campus populated entirely by lithe, giggling young girls who are buffed to a fine sheen, as only Michael Bay can. It's like a "Maxim" photoshoot; it's almost like there are three races of robots in the film: Autobots, Decepticons and Fembots (with apologies to the old "Six Million Dollar Man" series).

Sam's girlfriend, Mikaela (Megan Fox, playing the Optimus Prime of the Fembots), has apparently chosen to skip college, opting to remain the type of scantily-clad automechanic that exists solely in male prepubescent happy-dreams. Much has been made of Ms. Fox since the first film. And here, thanks to Mr. Bay's fetishistic camerawork, she may be more of a draw than the by-now-rote special effects. By far, the best effect in the film is Ms. Fox's indefatigable lip gloss; even in the midst of an Egyptian sandstorm, the actress still manages to be properly moistened.

Returning screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are joined by Ehren Kruger, and there is plenty of blame to go around. The script, such as it is, is a kind of hodge-podge of half-baked action ideas strung together with quick moments of character transportation (wait'll you see how they cross the Jordanian border without passports - or how they got there in the first place). What passes for dialogue in the film involves the kind of hyperactive stammering that is supposed to indicate banter. A little of it goes a long way. There's also a submoronic subplot involving Sam and Mikaela struggling to say the L-word. It's no wonder they're having trouble; neither one of them is a character, so what is there to love?

The writers even crib wholesale from the 1995 alien campfest "Species", introducing the first Transformer that can take the shape of a human female (continuing the Fembot theme - Feminist protesters, take note). This turn of events spawns so many unanswered questions, it isn't even worth asking them. They even have the nerve to open the film in 17,000 BC, with the voice-over: "Earth. Birthplace of the humans." It all leads to a protracted climax in an (unconvincing) Egyptian desert which involves Sam and Mikaela desperately attempting to run two miles to safety. Meanwhile, they're surrounded by Autobots. If memory serves, those machines can transform into vehicles, right? So why are the characters running? Get in one of those things and drive!

Since there is no plot to follow and no characters to care about, what's left is spectacle. And, yes, there's plenty of that. Two-and-a-half long hours of it to be exact. The robot-on-robot battles amount to little more than twirling hunks of CGI wizardry. I never thought I'd say this, but at least the robots in the first movie had some personality. Here, there's virtually no way to tell the different 'bots apart (except, sadly, for two offensive stereotypes voiced by Tom Kenny and Reno Wilson). What's worse is that the good-guy Autobots are completely ineffectual, with the exception of Optimus Prime (voiced as always by Peter Cullen) who's given Jesus status this time around.

Yes, this is the film that finally got away from Michael Bay. Despite the constant use of title cards ("The Pentagon", "The North Atlantic", "New Jersey"), the film still has no sense of place. At one point, the characters walk out the back door of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum and are revealed to be...in a desert, complete with distant mountains! Glad to see there's still so much primo real estate in downtown D.C.

Since there's so little that's positive to say about the film, it's worth pointing out that the special effects are flawless. Man and machine share the screen completely convincingly for every frame. The film also marks one important milestone: it's the first appearance of irony (inadvertent though it may be) in a Michael Bay movie. Late in the film, an aging robot (don't ask) recounts the story of an ancient battle that occurred on Earth millennia ago (again, don't ask). When the 'bot begins to ramble, one of our heroes loses patience and gives storytelling advice: "Beginning, middle, end! Plot! Tell it!" Couldn't have said it better myself.